Easy
by O Wild West Wind
Summary: After finally discovering her feelings for Fiyero, Elphaba quietly accepts the pain that comes along with it. One-shot.


**A/N: Sweet Oz, I'm sorry it took me this long to post something again- I apologize! Gah, I just had a really hectic week- like, imagine the busiest week you possibly can and multiply it by twenty and toss in some spastic puppies for good measure. (I exaggerate sometimes. Deal with it.) But anyway, throw as many tomatoes as you want- just please forgive me! D:  
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**So I know this has been done a million and a half times, but I just really wanted to write about Elphaba's thoughts after I'm Not That Girl- like a songfic, but not really? Don't question it, actually. Just pretend you've never read anything like it and sit back and enjoy.**

**Oh, and the quote thing is Tennyson, if anyone wants to know- I'm a little obsessed with poetry (I mean look at my pen name c'mon) and it just accidentally happened that Elphaba would be, too. Whoops.**

**…Can I just say one more thing? I'm probably going to be that person that writes an author's note longer than the story itself…I just ramble. A lot. On and on. I'm sorry. And now, without further ado: the thing that is actually a story.**

Loving someone had never been easy.

It hadn't been easy at thirteen, when she fell head over heels for the preacher's son, who provided her weekly distraction from her father's obsession with religious piety. It hadn't been easy three years later, when the new, young servant boy sympathetically brought her a bread roll after a particularly long confinement to her room. And it certainly wasn't easy now, when the boy she loved and the girl he belonged to were, in a word, _perfect_.

Elphaba was very guarded with her heart for this very reason. There was no doubt of failure, so why bother allowing the pain to start in the first place? But sometimes emotions are stronger than logic, and once they build a solid enough foundation, there is no turning back. Besides, if she were to be completely honest with herself, she enjoyed the feeling of love, even if it went unrequited; to quote something off of her ever-consulted shelf of poetry, "'tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all."

But it still left her hollow and weak, inertly curled on her bed with nothing but her own thoughts to question her. If there was one good thing about Galinda's absence to her "ozmazifyingly romantic candlelight supper," it was that she could not be here to interrogate and giggle, when all Elphaba really wanted to do was cry. Boy, she felt so stupid; here she was, doing absolutely nothing but twirling her hair, ignoring responsibilities, and pining over the impossible. But she was the type of person that formed an idea and held onto it tightly, wholeheartedly, and passionately, the undoubted cause of both her success and failure. She could try, but she would not let go—not to her pillow, nor to her disillusioned dreams.

The fact was that there was something decidedly different about this love than any other, and it had something to do with that empty feeling persistently gnawing at her soul. It had always been so easy to hate; to hate the boy that stole her heart, to hate the girl that stole his, to hate the life that stole her dreams, to hate herself for daring to hope that things would be different. Hate was so strong and easily expressible when she was alone in her room, with no one to harm and no one to judge. But this…this was different. She could never hate Galinda, her first and truest friend—and she certainly could never hate Fiyero, the one boy who bothered to see something in her beyond her color. She could only sit in quiet, stifling every powerful emotion of which she could not even place a name and pretend, like she always did, to be happy.

Every time she fell for someone, it was harder than the last. But, honestly, there was a certain satisfaction in meeting their new girlfriends, watching them squirm as she offered a cordial green-fingered handshake, which always counteracted the sadness she felt. And she realized now, as she stared blankly at Galinda's familiar sea of pink, that the hardest part wasn't the fear of losing the boy; it was the fear of losing a friend. She would never laugh at the girl's misery, and would be willing to lend an ear to every moment spent in Fiyero's princely presence, no matter how painful the cost—and this, she decided, was what made the situation hurt so greatly.

The hardest love was not when the boy overlooked you, or hated you, or refused to acknowledge your existence. No, it was when the boy was sincere, and the girl he loved was just as perfect.

_And I'm not that girl._


End file.
